New Baby, Who Dis?

I think every mom has their own unique post-partum M.O. For me, those first couple of raw weeks after the birth are mostly characterized by one thing: despair. Flat out sadness and overwhelm, with the unshakable feeling that I’ve made a giant mistake. With my first baby, I missed my old life. The bundle that I had worked so hard to bring into this world felt like an inexplicably heavy weight (she was, in fact, over nine pounds so this applied both physically and metaphorically). This was in stark contrast to how I imagined it all going down.

It's like when you chop your hair off or make a drastic color change. The anticipatory stage includes Googling inspo pictures of cute celebrities and imagining you’ll look so fresh and so clean as a new and better version of yourself. This is like being pregnant.

Then you take the plunge. It all happens so fast, and something about the lighting in the salon and the way your stylist does your hair gives you a temporary high – you’re feeling yourself. You take a little selfie in your car and post “new hair who dis?” on Instagram. This is like the first few hours after birth.

Then, you get home. Your husband says you look nice. What does “nice” mean? Why didn’t he say “super incredibly hot”? The temporary high starts fading. You shower and try to recreate your stylist’s handiwork but fail miserably. Suddenly you catch your reflection in every mirror of the house and know you’ve made a big mistake. You don’t recognize yourself, and you mourn the perfect hair you had just a few hours ago while wondering how you might quickly and painlessly go back in time. This is post-partum.

In the hospital, having a new baby felt surreal but exciting. I was in a haze. The nurses were changing most of the diapers (hers and mine), and nothing felt quite real yet. I was busy learning about breastfeeding, filling out paperwork and crafting a much-anticipated social post sharing our happy news with the world. “New baby, who dis?”

We rushed out of the hospital within 24-hours, eager to graduate into the real world of parenting. We had politely declined offers from our out-of-town family to come and help. Our child-less egotism had us convinced we didn’t need the help and wanted to experience this special time as a couple. Well, the time was special – a special kind of a dark pit I thought I’d never climb out of. The exhaustion was consuming, and it seemed the only way for the tornado of hormones to exit my body was through endless, heaving crocodile tears.

It was late one night in a puddle of those exact tears when my husband said something I never expected. “It’s not too late to give her up for adoption,” he suggested, deadpan.

In this moment, I did something I hadn’t done in a while – laugh out loud. OF COURSE I didn’t want to give her up for adoption, but the split second I had actually considered it put everything into ridiculous perspective. I wanted this baby, loved her despite not yet knowing if I liked her. And even if he was bluffing, my husband’s willingness to throw everything out the window for my sanity made me feel oddly understood and limitlessly loved.

There’s an unsettling truth about getting older and meeting new versions of yourself (yourself and your hair)– and that truth is that you’ll never really stop mourning the versions you are leaving behind. We’ll never be as carefree and close-knit with our friends as we were in high school. We’ll never feel that charged excitement of moving away from home for the first time in college. The first apartment has come and gone, as has the beauty of wondering who you’ll end up with and what your life might look like when you have a family.

Once you become a parent, mourning the things you are leaving behind feels like it gets magnified a thousand times. Because now you’re not only mourning the versions of yourself you will never experience again, but you’re also mourning the versions of your new little babe that, once gone – are gone forever.

That turbulent post-partum phase breaks away as fast as it showed up, and suddenly you’ve forgotten what those sleepless nights really felt like. You are, despite your fears, deeply smitten with a little being who changes at warp speed. As soon as you’ve embraced the baby stage, it’s gone. Those little cheeks have filled out, their two little feet are walking all over the place and before you know it, they’re telling you exactly what you did wrong when you put their dinner plate together. You are simultaneously obsessed with who they are in this very moment and insanely sad they aren’t who they were a few months ago.

Anticipation, joy, regret, longing - it’s a constant cycle. And at times, it’s so amplified that you go from one extreme to another in a day, even an hour. The transition from feeling capable to inept and even bereft can happen as quickly as the sun sets on another day. As much as I tried to prepare my mind for motherhood, taking classes and reading the books I believed would help me learn the skills to excel (like I would for any big test I was used to acing), there is no preparation for being a parent. For the not-so-merry-go-round you’re strapped into as you stretch to the limits of who you are and thought you would be. Stretch from who you were yesterday to who you need to be in the present moment.

As each new stage presents itself - new versions of my kid (now kids) and new versions of me as a parent will continue to show themselves. I’ll go from enamored and confident, to frustrated and lacking. Over and over again. It isn’t always comfortable, but I bought a one-way ticket and there’s no getting off. “New mom, who dis?”